


buried feeling

by softgrungeprophet



Series: Compass [1]
Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Bad Parenting, Burning, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt, Fire, Gen, Loss, Self-Worth Issues, Spoilers, specifically for issues #7 and #8 (i guess? def. 7) of the current Venom (2018) comic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 14:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16642412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softgrungeprophet/pseuds/softgrungeprophet
Summary: He woke slowly, with the ebb and flow of a nightmare. Outside himself, within himself, aware of himself waking up and his breath changing until he lay awake, fully awake, but mind still not quite able to detach from the dream, until finally—He opened his eyes.





	buried feeling

Dreams always had a way of never being memories, but still imbuing themselves with the past. Steeping in it. Pulling people to populate Eddie's unconscious mind, filling it with anxieties and past traumas and concern—the weird ones, he could deal with. Frankly, being chased by some formless beast through a vertical labyrinth of concrete and ivy was _nothing_. He knew how to deal with that, even without his other.

But the faux realism of a family member standing somewhere he couldn't quite see, in the other room that logically he knew did not exist, himself sitting on his bed—

And his father spoke, not shouting, but with the impact of shouting, despite calm demeanor.

"You live in this shithole?"

He couldn't see him, couldn't technically hear him, just felt the words as his brain told him, yeah, this is your father. Something in the tone. Disinterest and disappointment. Seeding _badness_ under his skin.

He was a journalist. You'd think he'd have been better with words. But how to describe that kind of emotion, other than _bad_? Crawling failure, child-like submissiveness, cowed under the unseen eye of the man who blamed his son for every problem in his life, whether he ever said so out loud or not.

"Of course you do. I shouldn't be surprised."

"I didn't try to—" It felt like speaking, but not speaking. Logically, his own body, his own self, but from an outsider's perspective. "I didn't try to ruin your life, I didn't try to ruin my own."

"You're right, you didn't try."

Age-old. It didn't make any fucking sense, it infuriated Eddie as a child, and it still pissed him off as an adult.

His father fell into obscure beration, unintelligible but undeniably, casually, thoughtlessly critical; and as he did so, Eddie saw the flare of a match.  Or... not exactly seeing... as _if_ he saw.

Kind of like the way he communicated with the symbiote. Not exactly in words, or pictures, but manifesting them as translations of buried feeling and instinct, subconscious meaning twisting its way into the distant softness of the internal voice, his own voice taking one and turning into the other both ways. He simply _knew_.

In the split second between the pop of the match and the flames engulfing him, Eddie felt fear.

Fear of pain, fear of death, fear of heat, fear of loneliness, fear of loss.

Interspersed with all of this, the gentle chanting of his name. **_Eddie.... Eddie..... Eddie..._**   Plaintive, pleading. Soft, ambient love mixed up in anger and terror and disappointment and suffering, all happening at the same time.

Like any dream, he couldn't just snap awake. They always did that—characters in movies, and books, and comics. Upright and fully coherent with a gasp. But, no. Instead, an eternity in flames, surrounded by screaming—his own, Toxin's, the symbiote's, Venom's—ropes of amorphous, parasitic (not parasitic) flesh trying to both sink back into his bloodstream and escape somewhere else. Around and within and then leaving him alone to burn to death.

Silent.

He woke slowly, with the ebb and flow of a nightmare. Outside himself, within himself, aware of himself waking up and his breath changing until he lay awake, fully awake, but mind still not quite able to detach from the dream, until finally—

He opened his eyes.

Already, it faded. The specifics gone, but the sensation of wrongness lingering.

Eddie's breath came fine; his heart rate, fine. No startled nightmare adrenaline. He just felt like shit, exhausted, and his eyes stung hot as he lay in the dirt, staring up at the underside of an overpass, shielded by tangled tendrils of ivy reaching along the molded concrete.

Yeah, his day was off to a great start.

He pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders as he sat up. Jacket... black leather, smooth and cold to the touch... He dug his fingers in, curling in on himself. Just pulled at it as hard as he could—he couldn't _do_ this. But he couldn't tear it off, couldn't take it off by himself. Who wore the comatose body of another person like it was just a _coat_? Just _clothes_. It melted under his frustration. Down his arms,  leaving his back bare, his shoulders bare, until it draped across his knees like a blanket. His anger melted with it, giving way to plain, simple sadness. He buried his face in it. Soft blackness. It barely responded, but, maybe from muscle memory or whatever equivalent the symbiote might have had, it curled around his grasping fingers and vice-tight jaw, soaking up his barely withheld tears, sweat, and misery.

Richards had said it was brain-dead, but still—"I miss you."

Even if it couldn't hear him—"I'm sorry."

Even if it never dreamed his name again—"I love you."

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO  
> it's me  
> the one who likes to throw in the occasional angsty fic just for fun.
> 
> This came from me realizing that Eddie has almost burned to death in a damn inferno not once but TWICE (sorry, make that three times, _at least_ ) and that's really gotta fuck you up. One assumes that, at this point, Eddie is probably about as afraid of fire as the symbiote is.
> 
> Anyway this was also me thinking about the symbiote instinctively wiping traumatic memories but also thinking about how dreams are weird and dredge up shit you don't even think about and how ALSO that, while the symbiote can like... influence the host's thoughts and emotions, it can't really control them, and that was kind of relevant to this. Though I guess if its mind is gone it can't really do that anyway... even erasing trauma.
> 
> A T rating might be too high but eh, better to err on the side of caution I guess?
> 
>  
> 
> This probably takes place during the several days Eddie hitchhikes from NY to SF. ([link](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16941639/chapters/39981168))


End file.
